ASIC takes exchange to task over computer glitch delays

Date: May 23 2013

Gareth Hutchens

The ASX took more than three hours to tell stockbrokers and investors a computer failure had knocked out its critical market announcements feed in October last year, according to a new investigation into the incident.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission report also questioned why the ASX told some market participants before others.

On October 12, the ASX's markets announcement platform shut down between 12.11pm and 3.55pm. This prevented the exchange processing or releasing new announcements to the broader market from companies listed on the exchange. In that time, 112 announcements were submitted to the exchange, 23 with price-sensitive information. The ASX froze buy and sell orders on those 23. The problem was not fixed until after the market closed.

ASIC's report shows the ASX took more than two hours to tell some market participants of the computer glitch via its subscriber-only Voiceline message service. It also shows the ASX took more than three hours to put a notice on its website.

That discrepancy meant some traders, those who paid for the subscriber service, knew of the outage one hour before others.

"This information could have been provided earlier to all market users," the report says. "While we are satisfied about ASX Group's operational response to this issue, we question the approach it took to keeping all market users adequately informed."

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